Daggett: you mention Queensland alone. A more comprehensive all-of-world review is in The Skeptical Environmentalist. The author was a card-carrying member of Greenpeace and an academic statistician who, provoked by an article saying the environmentalist panic is not evidence-based, set out to disprove it by surveying the best data sources in the world. What he found surprised him, and he changed hi mind. There is no imminent ecological crisis. People are just indulging a fashionable ostentatious fret-fest.

Just counting known resources, there are hundreds of years worth of fossil fuels alone; there's plenty that hasn't even been found, there's plenty the use of which is banned, and what about new technologies in the next 200 years? Yours is just more of the assumption of a static world, and the bland extrapolation of curves to a panic.

The 'we' everyone keeps talking about is not a decision-making entity. It is a fallacy to identify society with the state, and the state with society. No-one is ever confronted with the choice, that you pretend to make in the abstract, about what 'we' should do. Short of a gods-eye view, the only way such a view could be possible in the real world, is if the world's population were to be united in one decision-making capacity, backed up by force. People talking about how 'we' need to curtail consumption are merely expressing the view they would like to be seeing from their position as world dictator.

Wing Ah Ling don't know where you get the idea that there is thousands of years supply of fossil fuels, we have past peak oil, the known end of coal reserves was predicted 50 years ago but we transferred our dependence from coal.

If you look at Australian food markets we are spending many more resources to feed ourselves than we did 50 years ago.
50 years ago all vegetables eaten in Sydney were grown in the Sydney basin, all vegies eaten in Melbourne came from surrounding areas. Now we import all our fish, our vegies are grown in China, our biscuits and icecreams are made in China. All dairy product bought from Coles or Woolworths goes through Swires Cold Stores in Sydney and it takes 6 weeks from factory to supermarket. In short the food miles for what we put in our mouths is massive and not at all sustainable. Most European countries have policies to ensure food security but not us.

Wing Ah Ling, please answer my questions. You insist that others don’t avoid your questions. It has got to work both ways.

Are you playing devil’s advocate? The reason I ask is that you seem to understand basic ecological principles, but don’t appreciate the problems of humans continuing to live unsustainably. This seems to be just about as conflicting as anything can be.

I also strongly suspect that you are just pulling our legs as no one on this forum during the three years that I’ve been debating sustainability issues here has previously come out against the very concept of sustainability.

And then there is your pseudonym, which really does make one wonder if you are genuine debater.

I don’t want to waste my time here if you are just playing silly buggers.

So please, tell us honestly, are you expressing genuinely held views?

If so, can you give a bit of insight into your background?

Poverty & environmental destruction is caused by population growth!
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All the poorest countries, countries with desertification and growing exploitation of the fragile environmnet have the highest fertility... And it is THE CAUSE of poverty, not a RESULT of poverty.

Imagine, that our government had top build 5 time more schools, 5 times more hospitals, roads and somehow make 5 times more farm land each generation? Our wealthy economies would simply collapse! Our National parks would be opened up for food farming to fend off starvation...

But that is the burden we allow the poor countries to suffer from...
Rwanda's growth means that every 25 years, there are 5 times more people!

Why is it 'not acceptable' to talk about 'population management' as the solution to poverty? The people who oppose population management are sadists, guilty of causing immeasurable pain and death. (now I'm getting dramatic!)
SOURCE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_fertility_rate
For a list of "fertility" rates by nation.

The highest fertility rates have the highest poverty (with some sexist muslim nations with religious-ly motivated high fertility)

The other thing to note is the bottom of the list - nations who are committing genocide against themselves by failing to produce children are the richest nations (and some with social issues, repression etc).
These are the most feminist nations... If education of women reduces fertility (basic feminims), then stronger militant feminism causes low fertility.

PartTimeParent@pobox.com

Page 122 of “The Skeptical Environmentalist:”
“Thus it is expected that the oil price will once again decline from $27 to the low $20s until 2020.”

Lomborg looked back 30 years, found things that some environmentalists said, that were wrong, and wrote a book about it. In 20 years somebody will write a book about all the things that he said, that were wrong. For his oil price prediction, we didn’t even have to wait 20 years.

To be fair Lomborg recognises several problems and recommends reasonable solutions. He says on page 157 “We need to stop mining groundwater, estimated globally at 160 km3 annually.” All that water is used to grow food (enough to feed a billion poor or 200 million rich) and the amount of food we need is increasing.

Still that is not the main point. Will Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney be better places to live with 2 million more people? Will there be less congestion, more space at the beach, less pollution, better access to services, cheaper, cleaner more plentiful water, more parkland, cheaper electricity? Will the world be a better place with 3 billion more people?

You’ve noted that “you can't have indefinite growth on a finite base. Fair enough.” We have to stop population growth someday, so then when is the time we start taking some steps to limit population growth? Slowing it down gets harder, the longer we put it off.

You say that there are plenty of resources if we dig deeper with new technologies. Why not use those new technologies and extra resources to cure cancer and diabetes, reduce poverty, improve health care and education? Why should it be our goal to just pack more people onto the earth and use up the resources faster and faster? Does there have to be an imminent crisis for us to do the things that will be best for our children and grandchildren?

Check out Mark O'Connor's comments on 'Breakfast' as expressed on ABC Radio National this morning.

Mark is the author of the about-to-be-released book; Overloading Australia: How governments and media dither and deny on population.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2009/2475805.htm